The Forbidden Affair
by Zoe Elizabeth
Summary: Response to the WIKTT Regency Challenge. Chapter Two now up... Read at your own risk. [R]..SS/HG...Drama/Romance... you know the deal


Pairing: SS/HG

Rating: [R]

Genre: Drama/Romance

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and his magical world do not and never will belong to me.  It belongs to JK Rowling, and I'm only borrowing it for a bit of entertainment.  I'm not making any shillings out of it, and hoping very much that you'll enjoy it.

_'_**_The Forbidden Affair'_**__

A young lady, weeping her heart to tears, her fichu dangling across her neck, and her expensive reticule, forgotten in the wet mud she had let fall so carelessly just moments before her arrival outside a deserted, vine-swathed manor, hidden in the haze of moss and weed, had fallen down to her knees in a desperate sobbing plea nearly intelligible from the loud lashings of the riotous rain pouring down on that late August night, of the year 1819.  Beside her, a dark man in his navy cutaway coat, with his pantaloons tucked into his high riding boots, sitting on a broken pillar as tall as his knee, was as still as the resinous gargoyle statues flanking the front gates. 

The tall, lean man, his prime-goers visible from his settle, had pursed his pale, sinuous lips tightly beneath his long crooked nose, and the vain expression he so masked with the utmost enmity, had seemed inherent to his bleak features.  The loud sobbing, of the young lady enthroned in the muddy earth, seemed cadenced with the down pouring droplets of the heavens that soaked her already tear-stained facade.

"Please", she cried, her heart wrenching violently within her, and she unconsciously grabbed her stomach as if her heart had fallen abruptly within its vast pits, and the cries escaping her lips, now turned into soundless gasps of air.  

"_WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE_", she screamed, craning her neck back, to look down hill where tiny specks of lantern lights in the far distant, littering the dusty road that led up to the abandoned manor, were moving with such unwonted haste, towards them.    The quiet man, his heart, as heavy as the thin, sheathed, solid metal sword at his side, had been broken into minute pieces.  He dared not, to look at the weeping lady kneeling at his side, begging him to leave, for it would only tear him up more than he already was.  He was glad the loud pouring rain had drowned out her cries, for he couldn't stand to endure much more of her wailing. 

"You promised me", he said softly, the raindrops dripping profusely from his brows, down his long nose and sunken cheeks, gathering around his thin lips, forcing him to swallow it in.  "I'm not leaving here without you" he said, still unable to look at the young lady.

"I can not leave", she cried sadly, "you know this, Severus.  Please, he draws ever nigh, he'll catch you".

"I do not fear him" he sneered, gripping his sword tightly.

"You arrogant fool", she bewailed, "you're wasting time".  She turned her head around again to check on the oncoming party, drawing nigh and nigh.   "Severus get up, leave, now, why do you linger here?"  

"You said you'd leave with me, and I wait for you still".

"You wait for your death".

"Then I shall wait all night". 

The young lady dug her delicate, manicured fingers into the depths of the muddy earth and scooped up all she could muster and tossed it towards the seated man, where it plastered all over his cutaway coat.  Severus remained seated, and ever more still.

"Do you love me?"  It took every fiber in his being, and a slash to his dignity to say those words. 

"NO, please", she cried helplessly, "He's nearly here.  Go now, before he arrives".

"Do you love me", he repeated, looking straight ahead, while she wailed silently beside him.

"Severus, he knows", she cried softly with such miserable tone that he winced at the very sound.  "He will not be lenient if he finds you.  I beg of you, leave Now, before 'tis too late.  Please", she begged, "I can not live, knowing you are dead?"

"And what of me", he snapped angrily, turning to the figure coiling beside him, drenched in tears, earth, and rain.  "What is my reason to live?  So I can spend the rest of my days knowing that you are cradling another man within your arms, and I let you?  How can you ask me to leave without you", he snarled furiously, realizing how much he hated her at that very moment.

" And if I may recall", he snapped angrily, "It was I who asked you to leave, did I not?  But you deliberately disobeyed me, and sought me anyhow.  Now you're telling me it was a mistake".

"NO! Never, I do not regret one moment I have spent with you.  I love you and only you".

"Well, you're loyalties, say otherwise", he muttered angrily.   "You remain here as if you love him still.  I only wished I never cast my eyes upon you".

-Please don't say that".

"I should've left when I had the chance.  I never should have come here".  

Severus thought back to the night he first arrived in his carriage.  He had dreaded it all month, when he received the letter from his mother asking him to come home for a visit.  He hated going back.  It brought back too many memories, and there were too many faces, he didn't want to see.  There was nothing there for him, no reason to go back, except for Mother of course, though even she could not change the way he felt about that place.  No one could change him.   

 Severus Snape was not an easy man to tame: virulent in every aspect, his nature as callous as the crocus dying at his side, and his bitter eloquence, a despairing note of anguish, was one reason most quivered when too near him. He thwarted any, who attempted to get close to him, though no one dared anyhow.  Except one, of course.  Carefree, and innocent, she stole his heart the moment he saw her at a private masque, held two weeks ago, when she waltzed in with all her grace, and turned his whole world upside down…

__________________****

**Two Weeks Earlier: **

A large carriage pulled up at the Duke Black's manor, where a masque was held at that very moment.  The midnight sky was as naked as the expression on the visitor's face, and the crisp in the cool autumn air, was a blasted peeve to his senses.  The atmosphere was much too tranquil for his appetite. He hadn't been here for over fourteen years, and if it weren't for the request of his dying mother, it would've been fifteen, and counting.

The melodious tune to the Cotillon filled the air, and he dreaded more than anything to walk further than the foyer, into that inferno.  He only wished he could turn his carriage around and ride off into the night, where his nature was more than welcome and apt to its gloom.  The driver, tying the reins to the pole on his side, jumped off the carriage to open the door.  Severus Snape, and all his abhorrence, stepped out and looked up at the towering manor that had changed very little, since he left, those years ago. The rounded driveway, lined with small lanterns at the edge, was now hedged with a rose less, spiral garden of mariposas, and florets, lily flowers, and firepinks, verbenas, begonias, and suchlike, that seemed well tended, and the fat lady fountain statue situated in the center of the plot seemed unchanged by the weather; perhaps it was his obsessive mother's doing, sending the maids out every two hours like she used to, to polish it incessantly with clean, silk rags.  'Only mother', he thought amusedly to himself, 'Only mother'.

He cleared his thoughts, and readied himself for a night of hell.  Severus stopped under the marquee to straighten his ruffled tie, before walking into the manor, where a rush of music, noise, and excitement came flooding past him, and into the vast nature outside. The servant in the foyer took his coat and bowed his head as he entered the ballroom.  The crowded room of masquers was overflowing with well-dressed, well to do sons-of-a-duke, marquesses, counts, noblemen, marquises, countesses, and the primed elves at their beck and call.  Severus masked himself, and blended into the dancing crowd, hoping he'd get to the stairs on the other side of the room, and escape upstairs unnoticed. 

On his way across the room, a tall woman, when it was time to exchange partners, pulled Severus in for a dance.  His identity and hers unknown to each other, they danced around for a few minutes before the next exchange and continued on across the dance floor, where he was pulled in yet again by another, a blonde lady dressed in a ginger satin dress, the waistline tugged tightly below her bosoms, and her hair knotted fashionably above her head.  He twirled her a couple, with a dip or two, and gladly passed her on to the next eager gentleman drooling in the sidelines, before moving on again.

Quite a few women cut in to dance with him, even before it was time to exchange, and he, getting a bit annoyed, had to pretend he hadn't noticed most of them, and one had actually fallen right beside him when she twirled her way from the other side of the room towards him, expecting to be caught, when he purposely stepped away, allowing her to fall flat on her face.  He stepped on, and was nearly to the spiraling stairs leading up to some privacy, when one more lady had cut in for a dance.  He was furious, because she had now led him to the center of the room.  

The young lady, her chestnut colored hair, pulled elegantly back into a simple knot, had a pair of russet colored eyes that stared into his.  Her thin oblique mask had obscured only parts of her fresh-powdered face, and her frosted lips mystifying her features had strangely intrigued him, and she smiled lightly, with a glimmer in her eyes.  He stared at her and she, right back.  And they danced one round, and another, silently, till the room and the crowd, were just distant balls of color and noise.  Her presence intrigued him, and when the time came for an exchange she had moved on to the next gentleman, never looking back at him.  He watched her get twirled away into the crowd, where he lost sight of her. He turned around to walk back to the stairs when he was intercepted once again, but by a tall dark man, his hand on his hip, while the other on his sword.

"Well", he smirked, "I thought I smelled something vile".

"Did you check your pantaloons", Severus replied. 

The dark haired man laughed out loud and put his arm around Severus.  "Well brother, I'm glad you made it pass the foyer.  I had wondered when you were going to come in".

"I see you haven't changed much Sirius. Where is mother, I need to speak with her".

"Mother's not here, she's in Paris".

Severus looked ready to kill.  "What do you mean, she's in Paris.  She's supposed to be dying".  

"Yes I know, she told me, well I'm sorry to say (and I mean exactly that), that she lied", Sirius replied while leading Severus back into the crowd, and grabbing them a drink each.  Severus' pale face turned a scarlet red, and he grinded his teeth, (a very bad habit of his) and pursed his lips tightly.    
"Oh cheer up mate. Mother had her reasons, although I really wished she would've informed me before she got to Paris, because I had planned a trip out to Peru for next week, and if I had known you were coming I would've canceled it before it was too late".  

"Yes, I'm sure you would've of", he sneered, knowing very well, what a bloody liar his brother was.  They never got along before, and he didn't expect them to, now.  "Well then, I'll be off to my quarters.  I've no need to stay here and… revel.

"What the hell are you talking about, who the fuck really needs to, it's all leisure, Have fun, for Godric's fucking sake", he said, downing the glass of Bordeaux.  "Besides", he continued, slightly whispering in his ear, "there's someone here, I'm sure you're dying to see, eh". 

"No, there isn't".  But Sirius paid no heed, and led him towards the ensemble, where a tall dark haired lady, dressed in a silver silk gown that hugged deliciously around her curves, her black gloves taken off and held in one hand, and a string of pearls that haltered around her long neck, was surrounded by a horde of gentlemen. When she turned around, Severus' heart nearly dropped, and the torpid expression she had on her face had changed to astonishment. He could feel the smirk, plastered across his brother's face, when Isabella Sinistra turned around, and saw him standing there.  

"Isabella"

"If it isn't, Severus, Alexander, Snape", she dragged softly,  "I would've thought the next time I saw you was in your coffin".  

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you… Again".

"Don't be silly, Alex, I've missed you horribly", she whispered in his ear, when she leaned over for a quick embrace. 

"As I'm sure your husband, would say other wise". 

"Say other wise to what", came a cold, brooding voice from behind them.  Severus turned around to see Lucius Malfoy slither his way out of the crowd and around Isabella.  

"Honestly darling, have all the light skirts, gone home", Isabella said coldly to her husband.

"Now, now, Bella, you know I don't approve of prostitution", he lied.  Sirius raised his glass to that, and smirked deviously to the grinning Malfoy.   

"Really, well how then would the town Haymarket ware stay in business, without your…contributions, Darling?"

Malfoy grinned, to his loathing wife, before turning to Severus.  "So what have you been up to lately, Severus"?

"That's none of your business, though I'm sure it's not as useless as what you do with your time".

"Ah, now, now, gentlemen", Sirius cut in, "I'm sure we can put our differences aside- for the night of course, what do you say, we head down to the Hells, and get done up with a game of dice, huh, c'mon for old time's sake". 

"Yes, well, as fun as that sounds, Severus replied sarcastically as usual, "I'd rather turn in for the night".  Sirius put his arm around his lean brother, and nudged him hard in the ribs.

 "Ah, what a spoil sport.  Are you sure you don't want to stay around for a while though, I know a few Cyprians for a fairly good price, eh", he nodded fervently.

"Yes, well as stimulating as that sounds, I'd rather spend my shillings on a good novel, than for a quick flip of the village hoer's daughter".

"Now, now", Sirius boasted out loud, tapping his firm hands across Severus' chest, "here's a boorish cub with the heart of a farmer".

Severus released himself from his brother's grip, shook his head in disgust, and headed for the stairs after bowing lightly to Isabella, who hadn't removed her eyes from him the entire time.  "I'll see you in the morning", he mumbled before turning away, though his brother was too foxed to notice.  'Bloody tosspot', Severus thought, on his way up to his quarters.  'Some things never change'.

While Severus was lying on his bed, he couldn't help but think about Isabella, and his younger days when, he knew her much better.  Memories of the past flashed in his mind, before it angered him and he dismissed it, and turned to other thoughts.  He remembered the mysterious young lady he had danced with earlier, and wondered who she was, and why he had never seen her before tonight.  He could've sworn, he knew everyone in that blasted town.  There was something about her, though he couldn't quite put his finger on it, that was intriguing enough to hold his attention, and that was saying something. He laid his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes.  Though not before, a smile, flitted across his face, and vanished as fast as it had come. 

He'll ask Sirius in the morning.

________________________________

Prime-goers - Horses  
Pantaloons - Mens loose trousers (usually tucked in their high riding boots)  
Nigh - Near  
Settle - Seat  
Light Skirts - Prostitute  
Cyprians - "  
Haymarket ware- "  
Fichu - Scarf  
Reticule - Purse  
Foxed - Drunk  
Tosspot - A Drunk  
Done Up - Ruined By Gambling  
Hells - Gambling Place  
Shilling - Former monetary unit of U.K. equivalent to 12 pence  
  
I hope I got them all down....  
________  
A/N: Well, what do you think.. Is it worth continuing…..Please Review!


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